It startles him, how cold Kenny's breath feels against his neck.
Remnants of a wolfed-down ice cream sandwich and a half-finished bottle of Coors mingle in an unpleasant waft between them. Craig eyes the glass atop his nightstand, the way that chilly droplets slip their way down in a hasty escape. A grunt leaves him as impatient hands grip at his hips, rocking him in a slight, messy stupor. Clamoring for attention, it's nothing new from Kenny.
His eyes feel heavy, his head woozy from the emptied bottle collection gathered on his desk, carelessly tossed to splatter his mass media textbook with condensation. Open to a blurb from Tornado Alley, he recalls with a slight smirk. The monotonized quotes come from the Emergency Alert System, the warnings of downpours and rushing gales, an advisory to seek shelter. It speaks of the panic such broadcasts can thrust a community into, or the disregard desensitized citizens can feel when faced with weekly doomsday warnings.
A nip of teeth against his neck prompts his hazed vision back to the blond hair frizzed from the autumn rain's humidity trying to plaster itself against his face. There's no such warning for Kenny. Craig never knows when he's going to have no more than a five-minute warning text of his arrival, never knows if he's going to find himself with a bubbly barrage of lighthearted taunts or the philosophical ramblings of a man far too lost in his own insecurities to handle them properly. Either way, the routine is simple: Get the beers, pack down the smokes, crack open the window to let the nicotine and Kenny's voice drift off into the mountain night.
Tonight, unfortunately, was the latter of Kenny's ever-flipping coin. He came in without so much as a "hey", blue eyes lined with purple bags and heading straight for the prepared beer. Craig didn't have to say more than "what now" before the dam broke and the habitual spillage of Kenny's woes found its way onto carpet lined with singed fibers from stray ashes.
"I'm alone," he always claims without fail, a crack in his tone. Craig always retaliates the same way, silently watching while wondering what the hell that made him, then. But he knows what Kenny means, would never voice such meaningless opposition. A beer and ear buddy and a hook-up doesn't fully compensate. It never has.
They're void-fillers, neither one of them can claim more than that. Craig gives Kenny touch, reminds him that there's physicality he can have outside of a longing imagination. Kenny gives Craig noise, keeps him from stewing in only his own thoughts for too long towards that pendulum of self-sustainability and detrimental isolation. They're cheap beer and Newports, nothing but temporary blockades against reality for each other. It never lasts long enough, but they both figure it's better than nothing.
Tipsy, quivering fingers slide up along the back of Kenny's thighs, just enough pressure to exhume a long, heavy sigh at the reciprocation. Kenny moves with a fumbling ease, his state of inebriated casualness never failing to surprise Craig. It's slow, precise. He moves to straddle Craig's lap, settling nicely into his cupping hands amid the sound of a decade-old mattress squeaking beneath their weight. Chilled lips leave his neck, dragging up to round his chin. Kenny nearly smiles, mouth quirking for a fraction of a second at the feeling of ten o'clock stubble brushing against him. He doesn't dare make eye contact before pressing against his lips, demanding his comfort.
Craig obliges, leaning steadily back against his bedroom wall and his mouth sliding open, meeting Kenny's tongue. The scent of his mismatched delicacies had been unsettling, but the taste seems right. Sprinkled in is the musty sensation of smoke, and it's more Kenny than anything else could be. A hand traces around the back of his head, sliding up through hair mussed from lying in bed all evening ignoring the responsibilities of the world. A free audiobook and a cup of ginger-laced tea had been his modus operandi, before that damn beep of his phone and the Pavlovian methodology following suit. He squeezes a little harder, an unspoken punishment of sorts for Kenny disrupting his plans.
Kenny does no more than inhale sharply at the pressure, hips pressing forward to meet Craig's own. A low grunt is all he gets, a little more nail pressing against the thick skin of his thighs before fingers unfold and slide to cup his ass.
Kenny pulls back with the sensation and sighs, Craig watching him warily as he licks shared spit from his lips. Tired blue eyes raise and meet his stare at last, and Craig wonders if they've always seemed so cold. "Not tonight," he mutters.
Craig nods, immediately letting go of his grip on him and allowing Kenny to clamber off his lap beside him on the bed. He watches, watches how the curves of Kenny's hands flex as he snaps up their communal pack. Kenny's fingers match him, he thinks. Long, lanky, far too thin. They shake and twitch, but always manage to get what they're going for in the end.
Kenny's black lighter is worn, the plastic covering tearing at the edges in sharp points that scrape his skin every damn time. The end of his cigarette bursts into a blaring red, a long inhale doing little more than straining his throat. He needs to stop smoking; his cough is getting worse and he runs out of breath far too quickly. But who cares. He sure as hell doesn't. Who he wants to care sure as hell doesn't either. At least not vocally. All he gets are a scrunched nose and a light lecture on the dangers of secondhand smoke. He doesn't care about Kenny, just those around him. Par for the course as far as Kenny can see.
Craig leans back once again, watching the smoke curling its way up to kiss the ceiling, aimlessly spreading for a hint of escape from its confinement. He sighs, itching for one of his own but knowing his supply is limited and he isn't getting paid for another two days. But Kenny makes it seem beyond enticing, like he hadn't breathed at least five down in their last hour together. He makes it seem like something new, like it can be a different experience every time, every breath. Maybe it's his expressions, maybe it's Kenny's God-given talent for sparking intrigue, unwittingly or otherwise.
Kenny's eyes shyly flicker towards Craig's, trying to see if he annoyed him denying anything further. Doesn't seem to be the case, never has been when Kenny has his stopping points. They're not often, but they're irritating to deal with in his mind, being a tease. Being the very thing he wants to forget about regarding someone else's tendencies to unknowingly pull the same damn stunt. But that's not the same. Craig always eventually gets to touch him again, they both get to get something out of it, unlike outside in the real world where it's nothing but brick walls and blue balls.
"You mad?" he ventures, smoke leaking from barely-parted lips.
Craig shakes his head, shifting and rolling his shoulders to listen to the cartilage crack. "No."
"Kay," he says simply. Easy enough. Craig wasn't exactly a pro about lying when he was irritated, rarely hid his annoyance at anything he himself had done in particular. If he says he's fine, then he's fine. At least Ken has that to always rely on. Kenny shifts uncomfortably, staring at the end of his smoldering cherry. "Wanna do somethin'?"
Craig takes his attention down from the ceiling, blinking at him slowly. This is new, he's not entirely sure on how to proceed. He already put a stop to the one thing they always end up doing. "Like?"
A shoulder raises in a half-hearted shrug, eyes flittering around and unable to find something comforting to land on. "Iunno. Movie or somethin'?"
"Like… here or…"
He shakes his head. "Out. Sick of walls. Sick of… this," he mumbles.
The silence between them is suffocating, Craig staring at his anxious squirming, brow raised and breathing controlled. He isn't sure exactly what's happening here. "Why?" he asks bluntly.
Kenny bites his bottom lip, it throbs between unbrushed teeth. "Because. He's out. Why can't I be?" he says bitterly, stopping himself from going further with another long drag.
Craig nods slowly, allowing his anger to seep into the boxsprings beneath them, poison his living space with the utter acidity. The specificity has emerged at last. Some nights it was immediate, others it never came up, the rest filled with blotches of intoxicated confessions or afterglow pillow talk. "Are you ever gonna fuckin' say something to him?" Craig finally sighs, exasperated with this same damn topic as he has been for the last eight months.
Sad eyes turn vicious, meeting his gaze and Craig nearly stumbles back, thankful for the wall supporting him. "Say what? Ditch your boyfriend and come fuck me instead? Yeah. Sure. That'd work nice and well I'm sure. That wouldn't make him and Stan fucking hate me, right? I'm not allowed to do that."
He frowns, eyes rolling dramatically. "Who says?"
"Anyone with a shred of decency," he drawls. "No, I'm there for "relationship advice"," he quotes with his fingers before slumping, looking down at his socked feet crossed on the bed. "He'd hate me. Best chance I got is a break up and rebound," he sneers.
Craig breathes slowly through his nose, allowing an agreeing nod. He isn't wrong. It's a tricky line to walk, wanting to bite the forbidden fruit. Especially when it has an irritating tendency to coax you towards it before being snatched away by another. Craig doesn't think it's ever been intentional, having seen Kenny and Kyle interacting together on a daily basis. Kyle is just oblivious, takes Kenny's pathetic flirting attempts as mere teasing and shoots it back under the impression it's nothing more than friendly banter before going to all-but sit on Stan's lap right after. Craig has to give it to Kenny, though: His drama electives have popped out a hell of an actor when he's thrown into the spotlight.
Here, though, behind the curtains when the audience has dissipated back to their own lives, he breaks down in the dressing room. It eats and eats at him, every day wondering if he needs to just take his final bow and walk away forever, or if he needs to keep coming back to pretend the show can one day get a script rewrite. That maybe it can finally shift from tragedy into something far more spectacular.
Craig doesn't think so, but then again, Kenny doesn't care what Craig thinks about it all. Craig is just his silent, steady presence. He's just his make-up artist. Gives Kenny just enough confidence in himself to go back through the turmoil day after day, but has no real say in the state of affairs he's found himself caught in.
"Movie sounds good," Craig finally says, Kenny's eyes flickering from his tobacco-stained fingers and the scowl melting off his face.
Craig can't quite place his expression, somewhere between blank and relief, frustration and emptiness. It's a common look. Craig wonders if he'll ever get something other than the strange mar outside of the mess of expressions he receives amid a round of sheet-staining writhing.
"Really?" Kenny finally speaks, shifting to sit up straighter, judging Craig's face for an uncharacteristic practical joke lying in wait.
He nods, pushing himself off the side of the bed and onto the floor, casually moving to slip on his sneakers. "Anything you wanna see in particular?"
Slowly, he blinks, trying to comprehend what's going on before him before following suit, juggling his cigarette as he ungracefully hops about trying to pull the heel of his shoe from its folded discomfort. "I dunno what's playin'," he answers at last, vanquishing one foe and looking around Craig's carpet for the missing companion.
Craig hums, reaching forward and yanking his cigarette out from his grip, nodding for Kenny to find his shoe under the bed. He watches Kenny drop onto the ground, waving his arm beneath the mattress and taking a long drag from the filter, tasting Kenny's ice cream sandwich lingering on the paper. "We'll see," he breathes out. "If it's a crapshoot, we'll just go get some food or some shit."
Kenny at last grabs his shoe and twists back to sit up and work it on, staring at Craig all the while. "You takin' me on a date, Tucker?" he finally gives him a half-hearted cheeky grin that fills Craig with a wave of weary respite.
"Isn't much of a date when you're paying," he says flatly.
Ken snorts, shaking his head and struggling back onto his feet, shifting his toes to slip further into his tennis shoe. "If I'm payin', yer gettin' water. Might splurge on a candy bar for ya tho if it's a buy-one, get-one."
"And you wonder why you're single," Craig scoffs before he can stop himself. The air goes thick for a moment, Craig's fingers tightening on the cigarette and Kenny's blue eyes glossing over for a moment. Kenny lets out a long, forced breath before a small smirk curls on the edge of his lips.
"That's my problem, eh?" he says, taking a step forward and lightly bumping his shoulder against Craig's. "Too cheap?"
Craig holds back a thankful sigh and instead shrugs. "That's only attractive on hookers. Guess it fits."
Kenny rolls his eyes, grin growing and grabbing his smoke back, watching Craig snag the remainder of the pack from the bed and swatting at his ass. "Only for you, Baby."
"You aren't cheap for me. You know how much cigs cost anymore?" he returns the expression, getting a genuine chuckle out of him. Kenny begins walking out of Craig's room with him trailing right behind, making way down the stairs without a word. Both relish in the tension's disappearance, neither enjoying their time together mucked down with too much drama better suited in a rom-com.
Kenny always has an air of guilt when he goes over in the state he was in, but Craig has just never seemed to mind. Always there to let him vent, quietly nodding along and just passing him the lighter when he needs it. It's something constant that doesn't destroy him, the one routine in his life that he doesn't have to drag himself towards. Besides, he always reasons, Craig certainly never complains about getting to fuck him, so it's a fairly even trade-off. At least he hopes.
Walking out the front door into the night air takes them both aback, far-too-used to each other's company only in the confines of the space heater by Craig's bed. The brisk nipping of the fall air perks them both up from a sobering stupor, the air still damp from the evening's shower. A shiver roars down Kenny's spine, free hand going to clutch the open sides of his oversized hoodie and block the breeze gnawing its way through his t-shirt. He takes a final drag of his cigarette as Craig begins to light his own, throwing it to the ground and stomping out the cherry as they make their way to the end of the walk.
Craig glances up through beginning smoke in front of his face at the clouded sky, caught in the odd glow of buttercream moonlight grasping the curve of a billowing puff and fading into an obscure silver. It's Kenny, he thinks, the glow trying its damnedest to steal the show but eventually falling back down into darkness and distorting the viewer's perceptions. But, eventually, he reasons, the sun will come back up. A longer span of Kenny putting on a comforted show will belong to the audience yet again.
He glances down as his free hand takes on a new warmth, feeling subtle, unsure twitches as fingers slide around his own. He takes another long breath, feeling Kenny looking anywhere but at him, ready for him to pull his hand back and shove it into his pocket as a wall. He shakes his head, an almost amused huff of air seeping through his nostrils in a stream of menthol smoke. His fingers give no more than a soft, reassuring squeeze, their grasps loose and their mouths silent as they make their way down the sidewalk towards town.
Tomorrow, the curtain call will come yet again, as it always does. Kenny will want to collapse as the stage lights darken around him and the world falls quiet. The day will begin creeping towards the end, and solitude will do its best to crush him in its grip before he reaches in desperation for his phone.
But Craig will be there, as he always is, on standby to make Kenny feel like himself again if only for a moment. He'll wait, with a silent nod of encouragement, a patient ear, and a bouquet of Coors and Newports.